The Catholic Key blog of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has an interview with His Excellency Most Rev. Robert Finn, the excellent bishop of the same.
He opines on the visit of Pres. Obama to Notre Dame.
Here are a few excerpts with my emphases and comments:
[Q:] Dialogue was the big theme of the Notre Dame commencement. Is it possible for the Church to dialogue on abortion?
There are many associated elements that have to do with taking care of women in distress, offering alternatives to abortion. We have to work together, discuss and study how best we can provide for the needs of women and families. How can we reduce the number of abortions? These are elements for dialogue. But the rightness or wrongness of abortion – this is an intrinsic evil. The direct taking of an innocent life can never be negotiated. [That is a good way to frame the problem.]
Dialogue is a means to an end. The purpose of dialogue has to be a change of heart. [But … but… I thought the purpose of dialogue was more dialogue until you come over to the liberal position. Am I wrong?] If I listen well and we each speak the truth, then the dialogue may have a chance of being productive. But I have to have some authentic principled goal in mind.
[Q:] President Obama asked in his address, “Is it possible to join hands in common effort?” Can the Church join hands in common effort with the administration?
As a country we want to see an end to racial prejudice. We want a more secure peace in the world. We want sound economic justice for people. So we can’t give up on working with the administration.
But we’re fighting for our lives – literally. We are attempting to protect real unborn children by the thousands. We’re fighting for the right to exercise a rightly-formed conscientious difference with public policy. We shouldn’t underestimate the danger of dragging our feet in this effort, or taking a “wait and see” approach. If we are not ready to make a frontal attack on the protection of conscience rights, the overturning of Roe v’ Wade, and the primacy of authentic marriage, we will lose in these areas. I think the rug is already being pulled out from under us. If we sit back and allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of peace and cooperation in regards to these things, then we will lose these battles and, later, wonder why.
[Q:] Without identifying any person or group, Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins in his introduction of the President warned against a tendency to “demonize each other”. Were the bishops who spoke in opposition to an honorary doctorate of law for President Obama “demonizing” him or Notre Dame?
I think the bishops (and many others) were pointing out the hurtful nature of the invitation. As I reread Fr. Jenkins’ remarks I found it fell into three parts. In the first part Fr. Jenkins himself uses a whole series of very, very hard words. He uses the words – division, pride, contempt, demonize, anger, distort, hateful, condemn, hostility. And one might wonder whether he uses these words as a kind of a caricature of the 60 to 70 bishops who have spoken out against his invitation.
The center part is all about dialogue. He uses the word dialogue, I think, six times. And he quotes it from Pope Benedict, and he quotes it from Ex Corde Ecclesiae and he quotes from the Second Vatican Council.
And in the third part, he expresses his admiration for the President. So this seems to be the way he sets up the President’s talk for him – to speak in a very negative way about anyone who appears to be contrary to the decision they made, and then to stress the primacy of dialogue, and then offer his admiration of the President. Dialogue is important, but the question is fairly raised, “May we negotiate about things that are intrinsic evils?” and I think the answer is no.
[Q:] The President also spoke against reducing those with differing views to caricature. Is that what these bishops have done with regard to the President’s actions on life?
The bishops realize the very destructive decisions that President Obama promised to make concerning the life issues, and now has been making in connection with abortion and human embryonic stem cell research. This is serious business; it is about life and death. If in speaking out on these things, we are characterized as being angry or condemnatory – then so be it. Such actions are worthy of condemnation.
This is part of the scandal of Notre Dame’s invitation to the President – that it has the potential of confusing people concerning the Catholic teaching against abortion, and on the priority of abortion among other issues of public policy.
[Q:] Was there an overriding message to the commencement proceedings that came through strongest?
I think the message of the day was this – that the President of Notre Dame said that they had invited the President of the United States and decided to honor him for the sake of dialogue. And then the President got up and said that the differences that we have on abortion – namely the Catholic Church’s staunch opposition to abortion and his staunch support of abortion were “irreconcilable.” And at that moment, it would seem to me that the dialogue came to a screeching halt. Father Jenkins’ expressed desire for dialogue, whether it was well-founded or justified, at that point got thrown back in his face. The President shut the door on dialogue by saying that there was not going to be any change in his position on abortion and he understood that there was not going to be any change in the Church’s position on abortion. To me, that was the lesson of the day. I am glad that Mr. Obama was so clear.
And then, amazingly, [Here it is…] everybody gave him a standing ovation. The perception unfortunately was that this was a completely acceptable position of his and, because he is a bright and talented man, this trumps the destructive decisions that he’s making day after day.
[Q:] Is President Obama’s call to work together in reducing unintended pregnancies a new way to find common ground?
I fear that the specific way that the President frames this in terms of “reducing unintended pregnancies” is through the promotion of Planned Parenthood and contraceptive services. The President has supported the Prevention First Act bill that’s going forward. This is not about abstinence education. This is about promoting contraception and giving Planned Parenthood a huge blank check. If Catholics don’t see a problem with this then I don’t think they understand the threat it represents to the meaning of marriage, to fidelity, to chastity, to the very sanctity of human life and intimate love.
WDTPRS kudos to Bp. Finn.
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Bishop Finn said, “And then, amazingly, everybody gave him a standing ovation”
This was the scariest part of the entire commencement. Demagoguery at its finest. They drank the Kool-Aid. I’m still shivering from it.
This is beautiful! The International Down Syndrome Coalition For Life would like you to read their response as well.
http://idscforlife.wordpress.com/
I think we’re getting off of the point. By all of our discussion
about Fr. Jenkins errors, I think we’re failing to realize that despite
ND’s failings, it is still a solid university. True, the Catholocism
may be at a record low, but for solidly faith-grounded students, it
may not be a bad idea to consider ND.
I think the bishop is correct in criticising this recent scandal
at ND, but I also think it’s time to move on! Time to remember that
ND has produced many able-minded leaders of our society.
Gregory Thaumaturgas
Thank you Bishop Finn. He gets it.
Am I mistaken, or is the person above me advertizing their website?!?
Words, words, words. When I was a young man, if a doctor performed an abortion, HE WENT TO JAIL. Why does the Federal Gov’t fund Planned Parenthood? To get rid of the undesirables. It is that simple. The Government wants abortion. What makes this problematic is that Catholics don’t fit into this culture and they don’t know what to do about it.
And the lines have been drawn….The problem with Obama is that he does not separate the condemnation of the action from the person. We believe the person to be good. The action to be wrong.
If Fr. Jenkins does not wish to be “demonized” then perhaps he should refrain from doing demonic things.
Thank you, Bishop Finn!
So few reports have mentioned the President using the term “irreconcilable”.
That and the anecdote about changing the language used to describe his positions (but not reconsidering his positions) are the two most telling points in the entire speech.
A bishop who knows how to bish.
Where can we find a coupla hundred more like him?
AMDG,
Can we, once and for all, put an end to this useless dialogue the Church has engaged in over the past 40 years?
God bless Bp. Finn. Well done. I noticed his mention of “the destructive decisions that [Obama’s] making day after day.” Is it possible that Bp. Finn is going beyond the Pro-Death agenda of Obama. That is, far be it from church men to support capitalists and the wealthy, but do you think Bp. Finn also is appalled at the lack of regard for contractual and property rights as well as economic liberty that Obie is showing toward the banking, auto and energy industries and their lenders/shareholders, as well as employees–those that are not UAW members? Nearly daily there has been some shocking, out of bounds action/decision by this White House and no one is saying, “Stop!”
One thing that concerned me in addition to the more serious offense was the blind acceptance of Jenkins and the university community (at least, those present) of the broad radical agenda of Obama that is so far yielding economic chaos on our nation daily–and more is promised if Obie’s agenda continues. Those are things I think of when I think of daily destructive decisions of this administration.
God Bless Bishop Finn!
Adolf Hitler recieved many standing ovations during his killing spree, what a coincidence.
And if the Bishop is going beyond his condemnation of BO on just the life issues it proves the Bishop to be a smart man. Obama is trashing the consitution and the fabric of the greatest country in the world—not a perfect country by any means–but a country with the greatest history and potential for doing good around the world. Obama is a threat to life in the womb. He is also a threat to the survival of the nation which has done the most to save others from the evils of Hitler, communism, and Islamic based terrorism. We are, by default, the worlds’ protector and need to remain that way. However, I certainly don’t expect other Bishops to go out of the box. That’s what we elect representatives to do on those other issues. Would that more Bishops take a stand on just the life issues…all eminates from life. If we protect life the other important issues will take care of themselves. But not under Obama’s watch.
Can someone explain to me this Kool-Aid reference that keeps showing up here? I’ve read it so many times but I’m not exactly sure what it means.
Thanks!
ED2
An excellent analysis by Bp Finn and excellent comments from Fr Z!
But what are we going to do about the thousands of folk who gave a standing O to this generation’s anti-Christ? How can we change this? I’m not asking sarcastically or with any intent to provoke, but the problem is that Obama showed that probably a large number of both the bishops (the 2/3 who said nothing) and the laity are with him.
ED2, “drinking the Kool-Aid” is a reference to the Jonestown People’s Temple mass murder/suicide. Now when somebody says it they are implying that a person has “gone down the garden path,” as they used to put it. Oh great, I answered a question about a colloquialism with another colloquialism. Somebody please shoot me. Oh, good, they can’t, we’re pro-life. Whew.
Kudos to Bishop Finn. As George Weigel said in his article today, Father Jenkins allowed Obama to mount the rostrum and attempt to become the Catholic Primate of America. This is pure Alinsky, the purpose being to divide and conquer Catholics in America to help advance Obama’s political agenda.
The disgraceful AmChurch left is attempting to revive its dying movement by allying with a politically popular president. At the moment, he is their pope. But woe unto them when the fickle winds of politics change. May the Lord God confound them in their hubris!
ED2 – Kool Aid refers to Jim Jones (look him up on the Internet) who had his followers drink poisoned Kool Aid to kill themselves when the police were closing in to free them.
Jim Jones was a former Communist from the Middle West who moved to San Francisco and portrayed himself as Evangelical Protestant. He set up some sort of “social justice” mission in a poor, mostly black area, and I believe he is the first person to be credited with the use of “rainbow” to describe his activities. I happened to be living in SF at the time, so his folks would stick the newsletter under my door and I read it regularly – but I always felt there was something seriously wrong about him.
He also received lots of money from various government agencies and his plan was to set up a “socialist” community in Guayana. The people who went with him to Guayana were mostly black, particularly single mothers, combined with older white women of the “seeker” type.
The reason Congressman Leo Ryan went there was because some of his constituents who were family members of people in Jim Jones’ group had contacted him because they couldn’t reach their relatives after Jones had left for Guayana. Ryan was gunned down; almost all of the rest of the group poisoned themselves, either voluntarily or at gunpoint, by “drinking the Kool Aid.”
ED2: For the Kool-Aid reference, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
In 1978 “the reverend” Jim Jones and over 900 followers committed suicide, most of them by drinking poisoned Flavor-Aid. However, since Kool-Aid has better brand recognition, it is usually given credit/blame instead. I wonder whether the Kool-Aid marketing folks appreciate that?
Anyhow, hundreds of people believed in this guy enough to kill themselves and their children at his command by drinking ersatz Kool-Aid.
“Can someone explain to me this Kool-Aid reference that keeps showing up here? I’ve read it so many times but I’m not exactly sure what it means.”
If you enter “Jim Jones massacre Jonestown” in your search engine, you will doubtless find links to accounts of a man who, in the late 1970s, led his followers from the USA to Guyana. He led approximately 900 to their deaths en masse, encouraging them to drink a poison-laced fruit punch (and to administer it to their children).
The term “drinking the Kool-Aid” has thus been used since to make reference to membership of some group blithely following the directives of their leadership despite ample evidence (in the opinion of the commentator) that the course of action is clearly unhealthy. It implies that one has declined to use any capacity for independent thought or critical analysis. A harsher characterization than saying someone is “toeing the party line”.
ED2 – I congratulate you for being too young to remember the horrible incident that gave rise to the reference to Kool Aid in the posts above (and elsewhere). Briefly, an apparently very beguiling preacher named Jim Jones (NO relation) persuaded a number of people to start a religios commune with him in Guyana, I believe. When it became evident that the authorities were going to shut him down, they all, almost to a man, committed suicide by drinking Kool Aid laced with poison. Only a few people managed to evade what was evidently something of a mandatory action, enforced by the commune’s guards. Jones died as well.
Both Bishop Finn and Father Z are right.
Bishop Finn stated: “Dialogue is a means to an end. The purpose of dialogue has to be a change of heart. [But… but… I thought the purpose of dialogue was more dialogue until you come over to the liberal position. Am I wrong?] If I listen well and we each speak the truth, then the dialogue may have a chance of being productive. But I have to have some authentic principled goal in mind.”
I have been saying this all along. Keeping open lines of communication are important but at what point do you state concretely what your acatual position is? This is what gripes be me about all of this “dialoguing” the Church does. If She is not stating Jesus Christ is Lord and one’s only means of salvation, then She is ultimately wasting time and people’s effort. Merely finding areas of smiliarity or “common ground” means what, we then just skip merrily along hand in hand? BS. As Father Z says, talking until one goes over to the dark side is the aim and means of the dark side. The Church falls into this trap also, I think. For instance, the dialoguing with the Jews. At this point in time, what is there to talk about?
In my opinion, the Church and Church-related entities have become so enamored of the other side, we are continually making allowances and nuances and adjustments to our positions and views to the point we are actually going over to the other side and minimizing ourselves so as not to look “mean,” “uncaring,” “misunderstanding,” and all the other whiny political correctness the other side comes up with.
This Notre Dame debacle is an example of the musical chairs the Church always gets Herself into. It’s always the case the Church is the one who ends up without a chair and the other side is sitting there laughing. This really adds to the credibility of the Church.
Re: “Can we, once and for all, put an end to this useless dialogue the
Church has engaged in over the past 40 years?”
Should we just be silent and watch the little people be torn limb from limb
by a vacuum or chemically burned? Should we not say that abortion is
murder because it is judgmental? Should we strive for a
middle ground and condone some abortions? Should we give Holy Communion
to lawmakers who promote abortion because we should not demonize them?
I know the bishop in DC is willing to do that.
How should the dialogue be – give and take, meeting at the middle? That
will be useful for PP for sure? Should we give them our blessings?
Mr. Jones, (no relation), for the record, there were lots of Jonestown people who wouldn’t drink the poison and they were injected with it directly.
This used to be a big lesson people would use to illustrate the power of groupthink.
I keep hoping Catholic Truththink will be stronger than that.
Most of these posts are simply deluded. Abortion will never be criminalised in the manner pro-life people seek.
Re: Kool-Aid, when in doubt, “google.” I learned quite a bit, spent many hours in Encyclopedia Brittanica because my Dad insisted I “look it up.” That’s a nice way of saying “do your own homework.” Probably the best gift my Dad ever gave me, after my life.
balthasar, regarding poster delusion: with God, all things are possible. Therein lies the problem, and the solution.
You cannot Dialog with a murderer or one who supports murder. Evil should never be dealt with as an equal. And our Prseident is an evil doer. I respect his office but not him.
If Fr. Jenkins will not be a Catholic then perhaps he should be de-frocked. Its time the Holy Father intervened. There can be NO diplomacy here.
And, yes, Fr. Z, I did think before I posted.
This is all great, and it was wonderful to read Bp. Finn\’s response, but …
… where\’s the action plan? Until the bishops (individually, and as soon as possible all of them) get their priests behind them in a specific, effective effort to evangelize our own people, we are just standing around wringing our hands.
Save the Catholics first!
Individual lay people, acting on their own without the leadership, direction, and clear support of their bishop and their parish priest, will just be seen by their fellow parishioners as marginalized wing-nuts if they begin talking up the Church\’s teachings. Some of you here know exactly what I\’m talking about.
Priests need to deliver the message, and to do it in a way that does not have the lukewarm and the timid running for the doors. Remember that there will be women AND men in the pews who have had or helped to procure abortions, or at least given tacit approval by their silence. We need those people to remain Catholic and to re-form their consciences in keeping with what the Church actually teaches.
I\’ve said it elsewhere — don\’t chase people out of the Church, but we must work on the lukewarm Catholics. We need to be given the tools — the words and the proofs, not brochures with shocking pictures on them (though there is a place and a time for those as well), and the skills and coaching to deliver them.
Bishops and priests, please help. You still have enough faithful Catholics to get this started, but we need you now. The moment is right, in a few weeks the moment will have faded, and if you wait until six weeks before the next election to put out a vaguely-worded advisory, the opportunity will be lost.
When the game is on the line, when the clock is winding down, when the pressure is on; who do you pass the ball to? Bishop Finn. This interview is clutch. I hope more people read this. Game on!
Balthasar,
I believe that a man rose from the dead.
Believing that abortion will cease in this country is quite easy. And if there is an empty tomb, then certainly this would not be a difficult feat.
Yes, let’s “dialogue” with the chief spokesperson for the culture of death. I’m sure that this will result in all kinds of good things. Does this president really think he will convince pro-life Christians that infanticide is an acceptable solution to anything– ever?! I wish I had a third thumb so I could give Obama three thumbs down. :-(
Given some of the good Bishop’s points, does anyone have any idea who might have been advising Obama’s speechwriters?
Thank you everyone for answering my question about the Kool Aid. That was before I was born, although I have heard about it. I just never made the connection that that was what everyone was referencing when they mention Kool Aid. It makes more sense now.
Thanks,
ED2
Thank you, Bishop Finn, and God protect you.
Bishop Dolan “dialogues” with the satanically pro-abortion Anti-Defamation League and praises their work. I heard him on the radio on Sunday on the “Religion of the Line” program Sunday morning. He said he was more concerned with how bad Notre Dame football has been than with the whole Obama honorary degree/speech at ND issue.
Since Vatican 2, “dialogue” has been for the purpose of re-stating doctrine so that it becomes open to interpretation. “Pre-Vatican 2” thinking is that dialogue is for the purpose of conversion.
I’m not surprised Obama got a standing ovation. The educational establishment is overwhelmingly Marxist. It took me years to overcome the nonsense and illogic I was fed in college as truth, it is truly state worship. I went to a mediocre state school, but I’ve heard that the same Marxist worldview is promulgated at Harvard as well.
This was a good article. I’m glad to see folks catching on to the code words the left loves to employ, like “dialog”, “hate”, “divisive”, etc.
The most insidious idea is the utopianism inherent in the leftist thought process. Christians are lulled into going along with utopian experiments because everyone wants to end “hate”, “racism”, “poverty”, etc.After a while the means used to achieve these ends employs the very ideas and things they claim they are trying to eradicate. And so we have racism (affirmative action) to end racism, increased dumbing down to fight illiteracy, theft to end inequality of wealth presumed to be based on theft. THIS is the danger of interpreting Catholic Social Teaching to be an endorsement of Marxist ideology.
People are wired to prefer to be among those like them, to be clannish. It is not a sin to not wish to be “diverse” or to wish to have freedom of association. People will always have racist ideas, be greedy, be poor, lie, cheat, be cruel, hate. Thinking that OTHER humans can eradicate these failings, this sinful nature, is the essence of state worship and we see it in the fawning over the Marxist Messiah by the state worshippers. Sadly, a lot of folks who call themselves Catholic really worship the Marxist Messiah who they believe will create heaven on earth…or at least they “hope” so.
Our salvation is still based on our individual lives on earth. God is not going to favor anyone in the hereafter because, thinking they are “good” people, they voted for rulers who promised to create heaven on earth using the aggression of the state against their neighbors.
The Didache stated it very clearly:
“There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between these two ways.”
This was in the face of life in pagan Rome. Is the dichotomy between an authentic life of faith today and society’s norm any less today? As Catholics we need to be reminded that the way of the world is death for us. There is no dialogue or compromise with death.
I’ll post this here even though it is slightly (but not toally) off topic but I think needs to be brought to peoples’ attention as it shows the depths to which Jenkins and NDU went not to encourage dialogue last week end as they claimed but to suppress it. I may have missed it elsewhere and certainly the mainstream media has not featured it. However, captured on video was the arrest of Father Norman Weslin for praying the rosary on the NDU campus in support of life and in opposition to the merchant of death.
Fr. Weslin is no “ordinary” priest (I know Fr. Z there are no “ordinary” priests). He is a U S Military veteran (a retired Colonel) He happens to be elderly and in poor health and yet NDU found it appropriate to have him arrested. I’m a 43 year veteran cop and it turned my stomach to see him put in restraints. I’ve arrested my share of protesters over the years and never found it necessary to put handcuffs or plastic cuffs on a peaceful, elderly, frail arrestee.
There’s been a lot of discussion on various Catholic blogs about the persecution of faithful Catholics which is to come…based upon what I have just conveyed I think persecution is already here. St. Michael lead us in battle.
Really also – as Catholics dedicated to pushing the Culture of Life (and I even made a similar point on the Catholic Key blog comments) – we, as Bishop Finn did subtly here, can\’t talk about Abortion without talking about the Contraceptive Culture — the battle over abortion is more easily won by changing this culture of contraception (which also plays right into the battle over the meaning of marriage too – i.e. the inherent sterility of so called \’same sex marriage\’). Abortion – as awful as it is – is a symptom. We have to treat the cause of that symptom.
Good for Bishop Finn-a true shepherd!
I watched the address of BO at Notre Dame-couldn’t hear it because I was sitting in a restaurant and having dinner, so I read the ‘box’ dialogue on the screen. I was so disgusted with Father Jenkins and how he ‘fawned’ over this enemy of the unborn!
And good faithful Catholic priests like Fr. Weslin get hauled off the jail because they stand for life!
Notre Dame traded its Catholic principles for prestige, as someone said….I’d rather call it ‘a mess of pottage’.
GRRRR…..
Archbishop Chaput had some stern things to say, as well:
http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=95603
The fear of “Marxism” in academia or Obama making things “socialist”…are red herrings. The threat that Obama represents (which the entire apparatus of the US Government represents, frankly, whichever party is in control) is neo-liberal capitalism.
Catholic Social teaching is in many ways Marxian (as opposed to Marxist), and this is one point we could have in common with modern academia. Few academics are really Marxist anymore, but a lot are Marxian (look up the difference).
Separated from his radical political ideology, Marx’s ECONOMIC analysis is quite sound, and in many ways resonant with Catholic Social Teaching. His proposed communist political solutions were insane, but his analysis of the problem (a class that “owns” the means of production, but doesnt do any of the actual work, money-as-power/control, etc)…is largely the same identified by Distributism and other Catholic economic schools of thought. The current system is usurious and exploitationist.
I’ve often said I would obviously vote Democrat if it wasnt for the whole Abortion and Gay Marriage thing. And I’d easily sympathize with academia if it wasnt for their whole Godless streak.
We do have to be very careful to emphasize both points. Yes, there can be legitimate disagreement on how to deal with poverty, etc…but no disagreement on abortion being murder or homosexuality being unnatural, etc.
But I think the recent hierarchy has created some truly evil alliances over the years to fight “mutual enemies” in a way that has really undermined our credibility.
We sided with American Capitalism in the Cold War because at the time soviet communism seemed the bigger threat. In some ways that is now coming back to bite us, as it turns out that communism only seemed worse because it directly threatened faith…but capitalism, it turns out, threatens it in a much more insidious way by undermining it through materialism, exploitation, consumerism, etc. One killed the body, but the other kills the soul.
We sided with Liberal Democracy against Totalitarianism…same problem.
We’re siding with secularist (Anglo-American-Zionist) “Western Civilization” against the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism…but same problem.
We’re siding with the Republican Party against abortion and gay marriage…but that does also make us look like we also support their agenda on money, war, health care, immigration, etc.
Now, of course, life issues are non-negotiable, “lesser-of-two evils” all of that, etc. But these uneasy alliances always come back and bite us. I say we need to stop compromising. Stop choosing to help one evil side for the sake of defeating what seems, at the time, like a “greater evil”. We shouldnt side with any evil even if it is to defeat a greater (or merely more intrinsic) evil.
We need to form a Third Way Catholic bloc politically. Could probably get many other people on board too. Something communitarian, something opposite the libertarians (ie, something socially conservative but economically “liberal” or at least Alternative). We need to stop feeling like we are a helpless group trapped between two superpowers and needing to side with the “lesser evil” of the two. We have a Billion adherents throughout the world, for crying out loud!
The hierarchy needs to give up their fears of losing tax exempt status (I mean, really, what would they do if all the Catholic churches in the country just didnt pay?)…and use our institutional resources to get a Third Party viable that doesnt compromise on ANY issues when it comes to Catholic teaching. No more deals with the devil.
No more siding with “other religions” in general to fight “secularism” in general. Those other religions are as false as secularism, and secularism is just another false religion. We should oppose them all, not side with some against others. We should oppose both Western Civilization and Radical Islam, not side with “tolerance” to avoid “extremist violence”. Both are bad! And we should oppose the Democrats and Republicans, not side with the party of the military-industrial complex just to oppose abortion. We can and should oppose both!
Mark – Bullseye! It seems that many Republican Catholics have a core Republican Ideology rather than a Catholic one. I see that sometimes come through in the Catholic media —